


Not Bored Yet

by rain_sleet_snow



Category: Primeval
Genre: Developing Relationship, F/M, Permanent Injury, Recovery, Team Dynamics, past trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-18
Updated: 2018-01-18
Packaged: 2019-03-06 14:51:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13413585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rain_sleet_snow/pseuds/rain_sleet_snow
Summary: "If you've come to tell me about my personal saviour the Lord Jesus Christ, you're wasting your time," Ryan said."I have not," said the woman. She held out a free hand to shake, and Ryan shook it. "My name is Lorraine Wickes. I'm executive assistant to Sir James Lester. You, I understand, are Captain Tom Ryan, and you don't answer your emails, or your house phone. Also, you have changed your mobile phone number since your injury and Orange are being very stubborn about the Data Protection Act. May I come in?"***Recovering from his brief stint as a gorgonopsid chew-toy, Ryan finds his return to work complicated - and improved - by a new colleague.





	Not Bored Yet

**Author's Note:**

  * For [goldarrow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/goldarrow/gifts).



Hospital didn’t have much to recommend it. Neither did sick leave. And neither of the two improved when you were trying to, as the therapist Ryan had repeatedly attempted to escape put it, 'adjust to changed circumstances'. Changed circumstances being, in this instance, the fact that he would never run more than a couple of miles again, and marching anywhere was completely out. To say nothing of the thick pale scars knotting their way across his body.

"Changed circumstances," Ryan muttered, making his stubborn way through his house to the front door. "Ha."

The bell had rung once, politely, which ruled out Lyle (who had a key) Ditzy and Major Preston (who tended to bang hard on the door itself) or Finn or Blade, who had taken instructions meant to assist Ryan in the earliest, shakiest days of his return from hospital far too literally, and tended to try the door once and then climb over the garden fence to break in if they weren’t immediately answered. Ryan had received more visits from the project's civilians than he'd expected, to say nothing of assorted family members, Claire, Mrs Preston, and Cara, but all of the above tended to announce their arrival in advance.

He opened the door to a woman he didn't recognise, and squinted down at her. Not very far down. She was moderately tall, probably about Claire's age and size, and built on similar Junoesque lines. Claire, however, didn't wear charcoal grey suits. And she didn't drive the city runaround currently parked outside his house, or turn up with faux-leather black folders in her arms.

"If you've come to tell me about my personal saviour the Lord Jesus Christ, you're wasting your time," Ryan said.

"I have not," said the woman. She held out a free hand to shake, and Ryan shook it. "My name is Lorraine Wickes. I'm executive assistant to Sir James Lester. You, I understand, are Captain Tom Ryan, and you don't answer your emails, or your house phone. Also, you have changed your mobile phone number since your injury and Orange are being very stubborn about the Data Protection Act. May I come in?"

Ryan never remembered agreeing to this, but somehow found himself in the kitchen, where Lorraine Wickes draped her jacket over the back of one of his chairs, riffled through several weeks' worth of junk mail and removed it to the recycling bin, and laid down the folders.

"I'm sorry about the phone," Ryan volunteered, putting the kettle on for lack of other options. "I... sleep a lot, at the moment. Must've missed the call. And the mobile's new. The old one was collateral damage."

"I completely understand," Lorraine Wickes said, with a mild smile that managed to convey that she hadn't forgotten about the unanswered emails, either.

Ryan hadn't opened his ARC email account in weeks, and had studiously been ignoring anything that came from an arc.gov email address, which was undoubtedly going to get him into shit with Miss Brown in the not-too-distant future. He said nothing.

"I'd better fetch my laptop out of the car," Miss Wickes said. "These are some cases that Sir James needs your input on - he's reviewing them with the Home Secretary next week. Please feel free to start taking a look at them."

"How do you take your tea?" Ryan said, to her retreating back.

"Coffee," Miss Wickes said, unhelpfully.

***

"Tactical consultant," Lyle said thoughtfully in the bar of the Golden Lion (where the publican had been so unflatteringly surprised to see Ryan that he began to consider it was time he got out more). "Well, it sounds good, and it pays well, and it probably won't bore you, given..."

Lyle made an illustrative gesture, which everyone else in the pub understood to mean classified, and which Ryan understood to mean dinosaurs.

Ryan shrugged. "It'll pay the bills." He thought about saying that he missed the chaos, and then decided that he couldn't quite get drunk enough for that on his regime of pills.

He changed the subject. "What do you know about Lorraine Wickes?"

"Sir James' attack secretary?" Lyle answered, with a promptitude that suggested he knew her well, or had at least irritated her repeatedly. "Not a lot. Ex-security services. Put a question mark over the 'ex'. Why?"

Ryan described his encounter with her, which had been exhausting, but - in a weird way - entertaining.

"Well, I can say this much," Lyle said, having laughed his head off at various points in the narrative. "You <I>properly</I> pissed her off. My round."

Ryan stuck two fingers up at Lyle, and reflected that at least he checked his email more often than he had done before, and immediately read and replied to anything sent by l.wickes@arc.gov. He had recently felt brave enough to address one of his emails to Lorraine, as opposed to Miss Wickes, an act of recklessness that had left him sufficiently light-headed that he didn't even notice the tricky bastard steps at the supermarket, or the people who kept offering him a seat on the bus.

She responded to his email with _Dear Ryan_.

***

Lorraine was not personally responsible for his welcoming party to the ARC, firstly because Claudia Brown had pulled rank, and secondly because (according to Lester) she was doing what she did best, which was to say twisting arms in the MoD and threatening the Cabinet Office with a visit from Lester himself.

She did put her head in to say hello, though, and checked he was signed up to use the new firing range.

It was nice to feel like someone cared that he'd turned back up to work, Ryan thought, welcoming the visits from old colleagues and friends - and almost immediately cursed himself for ever having had the thought as Connor brought him a patented anomaly-exploring drone to demonstrate, and promptly destroyed half of his new office.

"Nothing changes," Lester said very loudly, surveying the damage.

"You'd miss it if it did," Claudia Brown retorted.

Ryan grinned at her, and tried not to notice the way it felt less rusty. "Now I really know I'm back," he said.

***

 _My office now_ , read the subject line of the email. Ryan opened it with a vague sense of guilt, and was surprised to find the words _Sir James would like to show you something of interest_ inside instead of a stern reminder of... something. It was dated 18.25, and it wasn't yet six thirty, so Ryan went upstairs, trying not to lean too heavily on the cane the physiotherapist had told him to phase out slowly; Stephen had developed the irritating habit of fetching it for him whenever he went further than a floor without it.

Lester and Lorraine were actually in Lester's office, watching footage of the anomaly team trying to recapture a large number of small dinosaurs with bulbous heads which had strayed into a mini golf course, and both of them were just about crying with laughter.

"Ah, Ryan," Lester said, leaning back in his chair with a broad grin. "Do come and have a look. There have got to be some perks to being officebound."

Lorraine rewound the footage and paused it. "I think you'll like this bit."

On the screen, a soldier hazily identifiable as Finn dove to catch a bulbous dinosaur, accidentally knocking the man standing next to him sideways; the man, probably Lyle by build and height, stumbled, tripped over an ornamental bridge, and flattened Connor into the pond it bordered. Only Connor's hat and laptop appeared unscathed. The former had become dislodged and hung itself on a small bush in passing, and the latter was being held out of the unforgiving waters like the Lady of the Lake holding forth Excalibur.

Abby, the smallest and blondest of anyone on tape, reached out to rescue the laptop (but not her colleagues). Claudia Brown sat down on the bridge and put her head in her hands. Ditzy, identifiable because no-one else in the team was built in quite such a tanklike way, put his hands on his hips and, Ryan assumed, launched into a lecture.

At this point, Hart and Cutter hove into view with something that looked a lot like a tennis net, with which they were trying to scoop up the dinosaurs. In the office, miles away from the pond, the dinosaurs, and the failure of good order and military discipline, Ryan gave up on chuckling and started to laugh.

***

A week later, Ryan's desk was moved up to share an office with Claudia's and Lorraine's. This made for better tactical oversight of the team, even if it rendered conditions somewhat cramped, but also improved the local biscuit and alcohol stash, and made for easier sharing of in-jokes and entertainingly compromising material.

It also meant that Ryan discovered an entire side to the anomaly project that he had not previously been aware existed, probably because it had begun in corridors of the Home Office and flourished during the decanting into a proper building of a project formerly hosted by Marsham Street, CMU's palaeontology department, and the back end of Wellington Zoo. Ryan had always been elsewhere, often in hospital, and definitely more occupied with the military end of things.

"Lyle doesn't even know about this betting pool, does he?" Ryan asked, watching Claudia allot the jackpot for 'who is Lester's mystery man' to a biologist Ryan had never heard of.

"Nope," Claudia said. "There'd be no point if he did."

She frowned for a moment, and looked at Lorraine.

"Ryan can keep a secret," Lorraine said serenely.

"I'm not flattered, Claudia," Ryan said mildly.

She grimaced, but smiled too. "You know what I mean."

Ryan was surprised to find he did.

***

Lorraine did not go to the pub with the others after a successful shout. Ryan had very quickly worked out that she was uneasy with people where clear rules did not apply. He also hadn't needed to be told that most of the ARC's staff liked her for her reliability, even temper and professionalism, but were either in the habit of overlooking her or scared of her. It was annoyingly obvious.

"She is scary," Stephen pointed out, fairly, as he leant against the bar. "Have you ever seen her shoot?"

"Yeah," said Ryan, who considered it a point in her favour rather than anything else.

"The professor thinks she'll come downstairs and shoot him in the kneecaps if he doesn't hand in his expenses reports on time," Connor volunteered.

"Well, he does hand them in now," Claudia said, expertly collecting the attention of the bartender with a bright smile and an extra half-inch of cleavage, and acquiring a glass of white wine. "Which is a definite improvement. Also, all determined women alarm Nick on one level or another, the fact that this one can shoot is just... extra."

"Makes you wonder how he married Helen," Connor said, thoughtlessly. Hart evaporated from the bar in the direction of the darts board, but Blade fortunately seemed to take this as friendly company rather than a challenge.

Claudia and Ryan shared a meaningful look.

"Not really," Claudia said. "But it very clearly explains the separation."

"Uh," Connor said, and wisely pottered away with his pint.

Claudia sighed, shook her head, and sauntered off to join the darts crew. Blade had been trying to teach her, since it had become apparent that she was good enough at snooker to startle the sergeants' mess, and that having her on your team was an obvious unfair advantage, especially if there were any new lads who hadn’t believed the stories about her.

She was definitely improving at darts. And Blade was definitely improving at human conversation.

Ryan watched them for a minute, until Lyle turned up and distracted him.

"All right?" Lyle said, nudging his shoulder companionably.

It took Ryan a moment to realise he was smiling.

 

Lorraine might avoid the pub, but even she turned up to the Christmas party - wearing Claudia's lipstick, if Ryan was any judge, and with a definite Claudia influence on her outfit, which was not quite as buttoned-up as usual. He told her she looked nice, basked in the brief shy smile he received, and then had to hurry off to menace Finn into not spiking the sangria, which already tasted quite dodgy enough.

He found Lorraine again when the lipstick had worn off and she had commandeered a chair. She was watching Claudia and Blade waltz around the room surprisingly effectively to Let It Snow, and smiling faintly, her chin propped up on her hand.

He took the seat next to her and sat quietly for a while.

"I’ve been wondering," he said eventually. "Why you're still here."

"I'm not that antisocial."

"That's not what I meant." Ryan looked at her. "You could be doing anything, with your background. So why are you Lester's PA?"

Lorraine was silent for a moment. Ryan thought he'd pushed her too far.

"I needed a change of career," she said at last. "Quickly. And this was the first thing that came up."

Ryan heard a well-concealed burn-out in that carefully level voice. He looked away, and rolled his plastic glass between his hands.

"Is it working?" he said. "Are you bored yet?"

"I'm not bored yet," Lorraine said. He could hear her smiling. "What about you?"

He looked back at her, and his breath stopped in his throat. For one second. For some reason.

"No," he said. "I'm not bored yet."

 


End file.
